


take to the streets with apocalypse refrain

by rowdyhomo



Category: Naruto
Genre: ? We just don't know, Dimensional Travel, Gen, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-16
Updated: 2018-02-16
Packaged: 2019-03-19 14:43:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13706610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rowdyhomo/pseuds/rowdyhomo
Summary: it's the end of the world and tobirama has one last chance to save what remains of his precious people and maybe the world, too.he takes it. this is the aftermath.





	take to the streets with apocalypse refrain

“ _No_!”

The scream tears out of Izuna like a ridged kunai ripped out him from the force of his denial. He’s screaming still, reaching for all the good it won’t do him, but even he can’t hear his words over the howling in his head. There’s an arm around his waist to hold him back, a head pressed against the space between his shoulder blades—Mito.

Tobirama kneels across from him, hands on the seal that’s rapidly growing incandescent. A smile sits on his lips but Izuna would have to be a fool to read anything other than burning regret in his eyes. But, his hands never waver nor does his chakra filling up the seal.

Izuna has never hated Tobirama’s unwavering resolve more than this moment.

The man says something Izuna doesn’t hear. The words caught up instead in the howling that’s no longer just inside his head but outside as well. Chakra builds and builds up around them in a burgeoning scream. Around Mito and Izuna the light becomes near blinding, a building cacophony buffeting the two right down to their core as time and space itself are rent apart.

All this is not enough for Izuna’s spinning Sharingan to miss the movement of Tobirama’s lips. The man’s last words to them.

_No, no, no, that’s not_ fair _you don’t get to do this to me…don’t do this,_ please _!_

Then the world cleaves in two and reality yanks Mito and Izuna away in a psychedelic whirl of sounds that are colors and colors that are tastes as time and space stretch, stretch, stretch, and _snap_.

They fall.

It takes several seconds too long for Izuna’s perceptions to reassert themselves. His vision continues to whirl in a dizzying array of blue, white, green, that leaves him feeling like a concussed drunk. A hand snags his wrist and his body jerks, tumbling off course as gravity and weight pull him in a different direction.

Izuna realizes— _holy shit, they’re falling!_

Whipping his head to the side, Izuna sees Mito clinging vise-like to his arm, desperately trying to slow their descent and correct their rapid tumbling. The earth approaches with rapid inevitability as Izuna yanks his arm close, pulling Mito into him. They clutch each other hard enough to bruise as the motion sends them spinning once more. Izuna’s stomach rebels and he only just manages to manifest Susano’o through the nausea.

The tops of the forest trees greet them in all their hard barked, deadly spiked glory.

Susano’o takes most of the impact, crashing down through branches like an elephant through matchsticks. They hit the ground with jarring force. Battered, bruised, but alive.

Ethereal blue bones fade away as Izuna lays there in the crater of his own making, ears ringing. His chest felt heavy in a way that had nothing to do the with weight of the stunned Uzumaki atop of him. Dully, he stares up at the sky through the hole punched through the canopy by their descent.

Likely, Izuna would have remained that way long after his aching body re-assorted itself, ringing in his ears fading and stuttering breaths setting themselves to right, if Mito were not with him. As it is, the woman rights herself, delicately pushing off Izuna so as not cause harm. She runs green limned hands over his form and, upon finding no damage such as a fractured spine, grabs him by the elbow to pull him into a sitting position.

Izuna barely registers it. His eyes continue to stare dully while his heart thumps an agonized rhythm in his chest. The only difference is now his vision is greener. Browner too that’s _so_ interesting…

Mito’s grip on his elbow tightens to a near painful degree as she repeats his name.

Breath catching roughly in his chest, Izuna slowly drags his downcast stare to Mito.

“Izuna, are you with me?” asks Mito, voice tight.

Slowly, Izuna nods.

Mito lets out a harsh breath in relief, grip loosening on his arm, but not falling away. Her expression is strangely porcelain. Though Izuna knows most of her poise comes from a mask, there’s a new kind of falseness to it. Instead of impenetrable, Mito looks like one wrong word will shatter her.

Izuna thinks he’s much the same. Empathetic pain roars through him beside his own. He can’t stop the shaky words that fall from his mouth, “…Tobirama…he—”

“Don’t think about it,” interrupts Mito. Her hand slides from Izuna’s elbow to grip his own hand tightly. Violet eyes bore into blood red with steady determination. “It worked, we made it. We can change things…think about the future. Not the past.”

“Keep your eyes on the horizon,” murmurs Izuna, repeating the mantra Mito said more than once before. “But…”

The interruption is all Izuna’s this time, his words drying up and clogging his throat. Izuna and loss are hardly strangers. Even before life as they knew ended on the whims of a madman, Izuna had lost more than most in the times called peace. Lost even more, after. Just several weeks before, Izuna had lost Madara. It hadn’t stopped him then. He hadn’t fallen apart even though his eldest brother was more like another half of him. This grief, it shouldn’t leave him so shaken. Not when he’s lost so much already.

Surely there is nothing left of his heart to lose.

“He’s _gone_ ,” chokes out Izuna, finding in the most horrible way that he'd been terribly wrong. “It’s not…”

Izuna stops himself from finishing that foolish sentence. Fairness had never been a part of shinobi life, had hardly been a part of the hell on earth the world became. But after _everything_. After surviving, again and again and again against the hordes and the terrible odds. After losing and losing and losing. After everything…it’s just not _right_ that Tobirama should not be beside them in their apparent triumph.

A shudder works itself from Izuna’s very core to shake his shoulders and tremble his breathing.

Mito’s hold tightens once more, her lips tremble as she closes her eyes, struggling to maintain her composure.

“I know,” Mito breathes. Izuna wonders if she’s shaking or if it’s just him. “I know.”

A noise wrenches out of Izuna in howl not unlike his denial minutes before, now far more colored by despair. His grief burns and churns within him, a maelstrom refusing containment by his flimsy flesh. Abruptly, Izuna sobs. Then, he screams, and he cries, and he rages, hunched over in the dirt. Agony erupts from him in bubbling hiccups and his misery spills into the world through scraping screams. He lets out heaving wails that leave his throat raw. Leave him gasping and shaking under the force of it.

Beside him, Mito holds his hand tightly. Incrementally, her body shifts toward him until she’s suddenly leaning against him. She does not sob as she curls up against him. Her grief an avalanche viewed from afar. Silent, but devastation no less palpable in the tears trailing down her face.

Tobirama had been every last bit of their hearts. Now that bit is nothing but exploding shrapnel.

“We were _so_ close,” Izuna forces out from clenched teeth and ragged whimpers. His voice nigh incomprehensible from the watery, staggering waver of it. “Why did he have to do that? We—we could’ve—"

The Uchiha breaks down once more. Mito says nothing. They both know saying ‘what-if’s are frivolous at best and damning at worst. Contemplating what you could’ve done differently, when there is no way to change it anyhow, it’s what drove people mad.

Minutes masquerading as hours go by and the storm passes as it must.

Izuna’s eyes dry up along with his cries. The grief is not over, not gone, but Izuna finds he simply doesn’t have any more of himself to pour out into that abyss of grief inside of him. A pit that neither empties or fills but grows ever wider, leaving Izuna too full and too empty at once. He pulls on every ounce of his emotional training to regulate his breathing, then shifts to finally return Mito’s half embrace.

Mito promises, “We will make it worth it. We will change things.”

Izuna nods against her shoulder.

After everything, they could do nothing less but succeed.

With a shaky inhale, Izuna draws back and Mito lets him go. Her poise masks her once more, a familiar shroud. She still looks like a good wind will knock her over but Izuna can almost believe he’s looking at a person instead of a doll.

“Tobirama, he…he said something, right before…do you want to know?” asks Izuna haltingly.

Confusion pinches the space between Mito’s brow ever so slightly, before she flicks over his black-and-red gaze with realization. Hesitance flits across her expression, but Mito hadn’t been the Uzumaki heir for nothing. She nods, tensing as if for a blow.

“It wasn’t much, he just said, ‘be safe’ and…,” Izuna trails off. Tremors work through him before he forces them down. His voice cracks when he adds, “A-and ‘I love you.’”

Izuna carefully doesn’t think about how that would be the first time he’s heard those words and how he never had a chance to say it back.

_Eyes on the horizon_.

Mito inhales, eyes falling shut, then exhales slowly. Something too pained to be a laugh tumbles out of her as she looks up at the sky.

Wry, she says, “And he always harped on Hashirama for being ‘sappy’.”

“Extenuating circumstances?” offers up Izuna with a smile cracked down to its core.

Mito’s smile matches his, even as she gathers her composure up like a suit of armor. She pushes herself to her feet on shaking legs and brushes bits of leaves from the front of her kimono. It does nothing for her overall appearance, ragged and dirty as his own, but it settles her.

Izuna forces himself up as well, finally letting his Sharingan fade to black.

“We should determine where and _when_ we are as quickly as possible,” says Mito, eyes scanning their surroundings.

Izuna nods agreeably. Mito’s voice is steady and all business. If he knew her an ounce less, even he wouldn’t know that it is only the eye of the storm that rages in her gaze. Calm for but a moment. Controlled but not contained. One day the other side of the storm will come.

Hopefully, her braces on whatever sanity remained would be enough to weather it.

Izuna vows to be there, even though he’s not so sure he’d be anything more than a leaf on the vicious winds. Not when his sanity buried itself with his clan and brothers and the world. Cut itself off from him entirely the moment Tobirama stepped out of the seal—Izuna shakes off that thought and inhales deeply.

_Eyes on the horizon_ , Izuna reminds himself, drawing on a façade as familiar to him as Mito’s own. It’s not _not_ himself, not exactly, he remembers being like this once. A cheerful boy with too much mischief hiding in the shape of his grin and the glimmer of hopeful determination in his eye.

If he stood face to face with this past self of his, he’s not sure he’d recognize himself.

But, when he opens his eyes that’s who looks out.

“We don’t have any money,” he points out, petulant. He picks at the rags passing as his clothes. They’re ripped in many places, dirt covered, and with far too many blood stains. “And we’ll definitely stick out like this.”

Mito hums before striding forward. Izuna follows obediently after. The direction appears random but Izuna assumes that she’s sensing some sort of settlement with Kurama’s help.

After a moment, Mito sighs like it pains her and muses aloud, “I suppose we will have to apply our shinobi acquisition skills for a new wardrobe.”

A grin that feels just a bit more real stretches across Izuna’s face.

“You mean steal from some well-off asshole, right?”

Smiling slyly, Mito says, “Of course not, I simply mean to reallocate resources that could be better used by the less fortunate.”

Surprised laughter bubbles out from Izuna. It startles him enough that he chokes on his spit and nearly trips over a root.

“Whatever you say, Mito, whatever you say,” laughs Izuna, once he’s straightened himself.

Mito’s smile doesn’t quite get wide enough to bare teeth, but it _is_ wider. Much warmer than before as she glances back at him before taking to the trees.

Over her shoulder she cheerily calls, “Hurry up, now, we have a world to save.”

“Yeesh, we just fell out of the sky and you already want to _run_? Slave driver!” he shouts back, dredging up the habits of half-forgotten and faded banter from before the world upended.

Mito chuckles lightly, and it sounds a little less like knives in her throat, before she jumps away.

Izuna leaps after her, some of the heaviness of before left behind when he takes to the air. He’s not okay. Not quite. He doesn’t think Mito is either, despite their smiles and jokes, but they’re moving. Maybe not on but _forward_. For now, that will be enough.

Eyes on the horizon, backs to the shore.

It’ll have to be enough.

There’s a world to save, after all.

**Author's Note:**

> i was literally just putting the line about Mito and avalanches onto my computer to be used for a later story and then my brain was like here!! a story!! i told my brain very firmly that we did not have a story and then it went ahead and did this. make of it what you will.
> 
> complete for now.


End file.
